Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
As I was wondering what to write about for my blog article this week, Southernman429 did me a favor and provided a topic. He posted the following on Dr. Leedom’s most recent article:
I’d like to pose a question to Donna, M.L., and Dr. Leedom”¦
Is it normal to go on with your life”¦ develop new relationships”¦ have new goals and new ideals”¦ years go by”¦ basically move on from the sociopathic experience”¦ but yet”¦ still feel a emptiness in a part of your heart, or a tugging at your soul”¦ a sort of grieving”¦ maybe partly for them, or about them, but also about yourself”¦ even though in hindsight, you have gained so much because of this experience and have used it as a springboard to a new life with a new mindset”¦?
Donna, I know that you have since re-married after your sociopath experience”¦ Does that bad relationship ever come up in your thoughts, affect your emotions or thinking”¦ even though you are happily married?”¦ At what point does this “go away—¦ or does it ever?
My experience with a sociopath
Let me answer the question by providing some background. I met my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery, in July 1996, married him in October 1996, and left him in February 1999. In a short two and a half years, he cost me about $300,000, put me in serious debt, had affairs with six women that I know of, and had a child with one of those women. Ten days after I left him, he married the mother of that child. It was the second time he committed bigamy. I suspect he married her to get health insurance, because he had diabetes and I sure wasn’t going to be carrying him on my insurance any more.
I was divorced in February 2000. The judge awarded me all the money that was taken from me, plus $1 million in punitive damages, plus attorney fees. For the next year I conducted an international asset search for his money so I could get back on my feet financially. I never found it, and in May 2001, I had to bite the bullet and declare bankruptcy.
Those five years were the most emotionally tumultuous of my life. Fear, anger, betrayal, dismay, hopelessness, doubt, rage, numbness—I was wracked by every negative emotion under the sun. My stomach was always knotted. I couldn’t sleep. My face, arms, back and chest were covered with zits. Yet I had to hold myself together to deal with the divorce, get my business going again, keep my few clients happy. Frequently it all became too much and I collapsed into a puddle of tears.
I begged God to help me; I yelled at God for letting my ex get away with his crimes; I prayed to God to take away the pain.
The larger purpose
God didn’t take away the pain—at least not right away. I worked my way through it. Luckily, I had a wonderful therapist, a woman who I refer to as an energy worker. She helped me process the pain and see the spiritual reason for the journey.
I haven’t written this on the Lovefraud Blog (although others have), but I believe there is larger purpose for our encounters with the sociopaths. These traumas are opportunities for deep, profound healing. When our hearts and souls are ripped open by the sociopath, not only are we given a chance to release and forgive the betrayal of the predator, but we are given a chance to release and forgive the buried pain within us that made us susceptible to the sociopath in the first place.
But it requires work. The only way past the pain is through it. We must allow ourselves to feel, in all the gory agony, the traumas of our past that were brought to the surface by the deceit and betrayal of the sociopath.
It is a physical experience. It isn’t pretty. I spent many hours in the privacy of my meditation room, crying, raging, and finally collapsing when a piece of the burden was released.
In time, however, the pain within me dissipated. What replaced it? Love and joy.
Starting new chapters
To directly answer Southernman429’s question, in the past two years, there has only been one set of circumstances that triggered the old pain. It came each time I started a new chapter in the book I’m writing about my experience.
To draw up an outline for each chapter, I’d review my files, with all those massive credit card statements. I’d look at old e-mails, in which I tried to find solutions to my problems. I’d re-read my journal, where I wrote with raw emotion of the moment. Reviewing the materials brought back the knots in my stomach, and the incredulity that I let my ex-husband con me. But as I got going on each chapter, the knots relaxed.
I met my current husband, Terry Kelly, in 2001, about the time I finally decided to give up the financial battle and declare bankruptcy. I told Terry my sorry story on our first date—armed with the information that my ex was a sociopath. On our second date, Terry brought a copy of his tax return to prove that, unlike my ex-husband, he actually had an income.
We’ve been together seven years, and married for three. I have never been so happy. My life is full. There is an aliveness within me that I never experienced before. And it never would have happened if all the walls within me hadn’t been shattered.
The title of my book, by the way, is Cracked Open: How marriage to a sociopath led to spiritual healing.
When I came back (the 1st time) from visiting my family and found out about the girl I called him on a Friday, told him his stuff was packed up and to come and get it and give me my stuff back. It took 3 days!!! Each time was, I can’t get over there to get it (I too almost told him to have his teenager come bring him to get it and maybe her parents would let him stay) but ultimately I dropped his sorry butt off at his mother’s very open apartment complex carrying an overspilling laundry basket of his stuff. It was a pleasure to see and if I know his mom like I do (She’s a P as well) she probably was standing there with the door open knowing full well what happened.
Iwonder,
Mine has belongings strewn all over the U.S. He used to own a condo here — I’ll bet the farm that it got foreclosed, I’m checking. Right before he left — and this doesn’t make sense — he went out and bought a whole bunch of expensive new furniture and had the floor done in stained cement, the place painted. He told me that he intended to stay. Of course, all this money wasn’t really “his” to spend (long story on that, too).
Some of his stuff is still there, some of it was in New Town, some in my old storage unit, some at my place … when he left town, he left all of his bills (deliquent notices) in my car. I looked at some, I mean, he just racked ’em up and bailed. I also read some “letters” from women who sent him money and who were PISSED OFF. Apparently, his M.O. was to promise them these little goodie bags in turn for promoting him, and he cashed the checks. They weren’t very big, around $50. But all that stuff adds up. I feel sorry for these people, I really do …
Iwwonder: stuff at your place after five months, eh?
after eight weeks, i gave all my ex’s crap away to my friend richard; nice clothes, $200 shoes, etc. gave his basketball and baseball glove to one of my students who couldn’t afford such things, gave his books to the local library, and left his other crap worth anything on the stoop for the homeless or whoever to take.
in my mind, they all deserved it way more than he did. lol.
TOWANDA!!!!
Hi LIG: That’s a great story! Did he ever ask you where his things are? I put a lot of stuff on the curb with a “FREE” sign and those things went in an hour. He took his clothes and other belongings 2 days after I kicked him out but before I did, I threw a lot in the garbage. I threw away his prized possession: One Steelers jersey. Could you believe when I told him i threw it away he wanted me to buy another?? After all the money I spent on him? All that’s left are 3 crappy tv’s and the homeless need electricity so i guess that’s out.
Unwilling: my ex stiffed his landlord for the rent when he moved in with me. He wasn’t paying the rent on time there either and was going to get kicked out. he didn’t pay any of his credit card bills, nothing. He had a car when he met me but it was dying. found out later it wasn’t his..it was the ex’s. she got stiffed for parking tickets when he abandoned that car when i got him one. now he still has no car. the new gf hasn’t bought him one and i took mine back.
i don’t feel sorry for the gf because she knew about me. now she can be the taxi and pay all the bills while he just has to “show up.” I’ll never forget what she wrote to him in a Christmas card i found….”your presence is my happiness.” I wonder if she wants to eat those words now. LOL!!!
I hope both of you burned sage around the ex’s stuff before you gave it away. LOL
iwonder: no, he never called me again to get his stuff. what does he care. now he has a ”rich, gorgeous” new gf. let her buy him new stuff. just a week before he confessed to a ”few month” affair with the new beotch, he was telling me to buy him new underwear. after he left, i found out he was showering at my house to go be with her. and i was supposed to buy nautica underwear for him to wear with her!!? ARGHH!!!
star: after he left, my beautiful apartment was hell to be in. i smudged and smudged, used feathers, ritual candles, the whole thing. every time i was alone there, i just cried and obsessed about him and what he did to ‘us.’ then i called a shaman (friend of my acupuncturist) to find out how to clear out his energy. and he said the problems was that there was little INTENT behind my cleansing of the energy in my apartment. he was right. i didn’t REALLY want to let go. but i knew i had to. well, one night i was SO INCREDIBLY angry at my ex, and that was the moment. i smudged and lit candles and meditated him away with GREAT INTENT. presto, change-o. my apartment is a haven again … without HIM to screw up the energy. i still cry once in a while, mostly when i’m lying in bed late at night just missing the companionship and cuddling. but it passes quickly, and i’m not sorry he’s gone anymore.
intent. a powerful thing.
LIG: You are so right–intent is very powerful. Do you have any animals? I cuddle with my cats and snakes all the time. It seems to satisfy the cuddle cravings! BTW, you sound like you’re in a good space today, or getting there.
Iwonder,
RE: “your presence is my happiness.”
Ha-ha. Maybe in another six months or so, she’ll change that attitude. I used to think that my ex-S was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He told me that he didn’t have cable because he didn’t believe in watching t.v. He told me that he didn’t drive because it was ecologically unsound and too expensive. He didn’t have cable because it got shut off, and he didn’t have car because he totalled his only one, and it wasn’t insured. It was the little “bullshit” lies that made me wonder about him. I mean, if your credit card won’t go through because you didn’t make the payment, man up and admit it, don’t lie. Mine left a lot of people in a lurch, too when he left. He used to have this office — ran out on the last month of rent, I mean, literally got all his stuff out in the middle of the night. When he left town, he just left his condo pretty much how it was — one of his couch-surfing friends was staying there. Like I said, I’m pretty sure it went into foreclosure, because there’s no way he could pay for it unless his GF is really rich, and she is not, I can tell you that! 🙂
Hi LIG: I’m crackin up because my ex did the same. I just bought him new undewear right before i caught him. Everything that was connected to the ex is out of the house. Only the crap in the garage is there and I don’t have to go out there. He didn’t pick up the crap today…probably because he can’t look at me. Which is fine. He’ll probably sneak over while i’m at work.
I have a dog. He’s my buddy and is a great companion.
I cry sometimes once a day…mostly when I’m angry. I was discarded before he left..not after. That hurts the most. You know how that is. Once they are involved with someone else, you get short-changed.
I’m telling you. I will never go through this again.
A friend made me laugh today and see things a little differently. She said, “was the s-e-x great?” I said no. She said, “did he help with finances and chores around the house?” I said “no.” Then she said well than why are you even sorry he’s gone? I thought about it and said to myself she is correct. What the hell was I thinking?? The s-e-x went downhill when he was cheating. My money went down the toilet, I almost lost my home and the 2nd car I was paying for and I was dog-tired from working to pay bills and doing all the housework.
Wow. Reality check.